Shipwreck - The Coast of Utopia - Theater - Review - New York Times:
But the most stunning moment of all arrives when Mr. Stoppard simply pulls the plug on the dense talk that has been buzzing from the stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, where “Shipwreck” opened last night, and asks us to experience a world hitherto defined, above all, by words through the perspective of a deaf child.
It’s not exactly that the passionate debating, which has been going on with scarcely a pause through the first half of the first act, comes to a complete stop. That would be asking too much of the play’s logorrheic characters, who are never happier than when they are arguing about lofty subjects. They continue to work their mouths and gesticulate madly.
But we don’t hear them. The focus of attention in the scene — set in the lavishly appointed Paris salon of the Russian exile Alexander Herzen (Brian F. O’Byrne) and his wife, Natalie (Jennifer Ehle) in 1847 — shifts to their small son, Kolya (August Gladstone), who is playing with a top at the edge of the stage, his back to the throng of chattering adults. Deaf since birth, Kolya is aware only of the spinning top and the ominous vibrations of thunder.
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